


In the Absence of Stars

by Papapaldi



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Doctor Who Feels, Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Lesbian, Lesbians in Space, Post-Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Regeneration, Space Wives, Spoilers, Thoschei, Twelfth Doctor Era, best enemies, doctormaster - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 12:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16175459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papapaldi/pseuds/Papapaldi
Summary: Missy lies paralysed and dying on a Mondasian colonist ship being torn apart by cybermen after being double-crossed... by herself. A strangely familiar woman comes to her rescue and helps her through the process of regeneration.





	In the Absence of Stars

The starless sky stretches out above her, bright fires reflecting in her eyes – she started those fires – so she can’t exactly complain. The doubled edged knife in the back had been one thing – but now – she was to be consumed by the very monsters she created. She may not have stood with the Doctor, but she fell all the same. She hopes that the Doctor understood what she had meant, the knowing look in the eyes and the blade pressed against his side (I am going to stop him. I will stop him so that he can become the one you know now. One more nudge towards the waters of change he goes). It was fitting that the one who ended her was herself, it was an exemplar of personal growth taken to a comical extreme. Now, she is lying on a Mondasian colonist ship, paralysed and halfway dead, watching the world burn up. This time, she watches from the inside, instead of from a vantage where she can spectate with glee as death rears its head to feast. She wonders if anyone is watching now. Little does she realise; there is. 

Amongst the explosions of carnage surrounding, she doesn’t notice their approaching footsteps. Missy is startled when a face fades into view - a kind expression that blocks those fires above that were teasing her so mercilessly. 

She glows, the warring fires behind her a ringed halo around her form, casting down upon her darker scalp while platinum ends dance in the breeze – a breeze conjured by a ship being eaten up by the vacuum of space, but peaceful all the same. Her face is dashed with the ashes of war, eyes wide and concerned – an intoxicating mixture of forest green and earthy tones that reflect the icy pools staring upwards. 

Missy tries to move, but instead feels the full extent of her paralysis. The new arrival notices, however, picking up on the slightest twitch of an eyelid or tightening tendon in the face. Hope spreads across the woman’s face in a golden grin. “Hello there.” The woman reaches down to touch the other’s face, a gentle gesture brushing a coil of brown hair aside from skin doused in dirt and tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner, but this black hole made things a bit of a chore, let alone crossing my own time stream. I was able to lock onto this place as a previous location in the TARDIS matrix, then track any Gallifreyan life signs – there aren’t too many of them around after all – and… I’m rambling aren’t I?” The Doctor glances back at missy apologetically. Missy smiles, curling her lips to a thin upturn, the best she can do in her current condition. 

“Hello.” she whispers. 

The Doctor chuckles, a mirthful laugh brought new joy on new lips. She flashes Missy a winning smile. “Hello.” They spend a mere moment gazing into each other’s eyes before the Doctor springs up. “Right then!” She exclaims, and begins pacing the dusty landscape while waggling her sonic screwdriver around like an idiot. Same old Theta. 

“Now Missy, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for you, you’re going to have to regenerate.” Missy wishes she could roll her eyes, maybe offer a sarcastic remark or two - but is instead left essentially lifeless. She thinks perhaps that the Doctor is enjoying this a little too much. You really do underestimate me you know, she imagined herself saying, I crafted the device myself, there is no chance of regeneration. “I know what you’re thinking, that regeneration is impossible, but I believe I might just have found a way around that.” The Doctor smirks, throwing her screwdriver into the air and catching it. Oh this one’s smug alright, some things never change. “Overriding the mechanism requires a surge of regeneration energy far more powerful than a single cycle, perhaps more than a full set, and all from one source as well blimey - quite the weapon I might add - brilliant, but altogether a little contradictory to your new and improved goodness.”

“Luckily for you, I have plenty of regeneration energy to spare, a charitable donation from the Gallifreyan high council in fact - though I won’t blame you for that oversight, I would never have suspected it myself considering my somewhat rocky relationship with that charming bunch.” She rounds on Missy, her eyes flashing gold as regeneration energy surges behind them. Suddenly, Missy realises what she is about to do, and wishes that she could protest. “Anyway, I think that I might just have a near infinite number of regenerations – that’s quite enough to spare I think.” She smiles again. Happy, Missy thinks to herself, so happy. Doesn’t she realise that this could kill her? The worst of it is; she probably does. 

“Alright then,” the Doctor said, rubbing her hands together and blowing starlight from her lips, as if kindling a small flame. “Here goes nothing.” 

The Doctor bends down beside missy, inching closer. She places each of her glowing hands upon Missy’s cheeks softly. Her face grows lax, expression softening as her lips part slightly, letting bright particles flow from them, flooding life and movement into her patient. She kisses her, soft and slow and deliberate - as much a procedure as an affectionate gesture - and missy is overwhelmed by a mixture of power and love. A soft golden glow envelops them both, energy coursing from one to the other, like breath pushed back into her lungs, wrenching her back to life. Missy feels each nerve activate one by one, a tingling sensation as feeling and autonomy returns. The Doctor helps her to her feet. Standing up, she no longer finds her self having to crane her neck up to meet the Doctor’s eyes. It’s a welcome change. 

The Doctor exhales a sigh of relief. “Phew, I’m okay!”

“Wasn’t that part of your plan?” Missy teases, finally to snark this idiot as much as she deserves. 

“Well, sure it was part of it. But I didn’t think it would actually work!” She laughs and links her arm through Missy’s, striding out enthusiastically and dragging Missy along with her. Arm in arm, they trek across the desolated forest, embers dancing on the winds of battle, towards the TARDIS. 

Missy can feel the next one along, feel it ready to burst forth into the world and bring a new age with it – like a child’s tooth, clinging to the gum by a strand of mangled skin, the new pearly white waiting in the space it will leave behind, ready to come through and bite. 

It’s strange, she’s never felt the same sentimental connection with her incarnations like the Doctor did, and she had always considered them foolish to do so. It probably has something to do with her past as a parasitic body snatcher, or perhaps her sheer number of incarnations, a constant plight for extended life that blinded her from the individual pleasures of a renewed consciousness. Even so, other time lords were never quite as sentimental, or as dramatic, as the Doctor when it came to regeneration. To the Doctor, it was something akin to death, and missy supposed it was to do with the mortal company he kept, who could not sense that underlying essence that lived in each incarnation, or overcome the superficial aspects of existence. He had adapted to that mortal way of thinking, all those infants he surrounded himself with weeping for him... her, she corrected. How could she forget.

She stood now – the Doctor – fiddling around with the TARDIS console as if she had some idea of what she was doing. She wore an abominable mix of clothes as usual; baggy blue ¾ pants held by revolting yellow suspenders over a striped top. At least the coat was in good taste, and the look of it billowing out behind her as she strode the scene was admirably dramatic. The Doctor had never shared the master’s sense of style. 

“You copied me.” Missy teases. 

“Well, it was bound to happen eventually. To be honest, I was beginning to think I’d developed a fault. Besides, you’re much prettier.” She casts missy a sarcastic, sultry look. Missy rolls her eyes.

“Well dear, that’s a given.” A sharp stab of pain lurches through her hearts and she stumbles forwards against the console, gasping for breath. “Why is it taking so long, I’m itching to get this over with.” She groans.

“No, you’re not,” the Doctor sighs matter-of-factly. “You’re scared.”

Missy scoffs. “I’m not scared, you ridiculous old fool.” 

“Yes, you are,” she steps away from the console and meets missy’s eyes. “You’re and sad too. You spent a long time as missy, you changed so much.” She gathered Missy’s hands in her own, glowing with yellow light and buzzing with energy, with potential. “You’re not ready to let that go.” She whispers. 

“Don’t be stupid.” Missy snatches her hands away, forcing the regeneration energy down again. Not yet. The Doctor raises an eyebrow, as if Missy has just proven her right. “Oh, shut up,” Missy snaps. “I’m not being sentimental, I just really liked this one. I mean look at me,” she does a little twirl in her purple skirt, though it’s ravaged and caked with dirt, “I’m gorgeous.” The Doctor smirks, a loving, but knowing smile. It’s infuriating. “You sure you want me blasting off in here – new regeneration cycle, and a borrowed one at that – it might ruin your pretty little control room.” 

“It’s ok,” the Doctor says, knocking her fist against the glass cylinder extending from the console, invoking a warbled sound from within, “she’s a resilient one.”

Missy smiles, and feels a sadness stretch through her like poison – a melancholic affliction of the blood planted by the Doctor, spreading through her veins. It was a promise of stars, a promise of adventure. A promise made on the crimson grass fields of Gallifrey under silver canopies and a dark, beckoning sky. [Stand with me, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. Me too.] 

“I wanted to stand with you, I was going to come back. I –“

“Missy,” the Doctor interrupted, her voice suddenly gentle and series. “Everything you’re about to say, I already know.” Why, why does the Doctor have to be so forgiving, after everything she’s done… “You’re here now, and I have a promise to keep.” [Every star, you and me, you watch us run.] 

Missy nods, staring down, trying to take in everything she’s feeling, the feeling of being herself, being Missy. “Isn’t it funny that I ended where I started,” she begins, and – to her horror – she is close to tears, “that I always knew on some subconscious level, what was going to happen in the end.”

“That you’d double cross yourself like the cunning bastard you are and secure both your birth and your demise.” The Doctor replies snidely, coming to face her. 

“Well, when you put it like that it sounds rather obvious but… yes. Oh listen to me go on with my poetry,” she sighs, “I sound like one of your pets.”

“Friends, missy, and it’s time you learned the difference.” She reaches out and places her hands on Missy’s shoulders, staring deep into her glassy eyes. 

“It’s never felt like this before regenerating. Timelords aren’t supposed to feel like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like they’re dying.” And listen to her, lamenting ‘oh the pain, oh the misery.’ It’s weakness, all of it. But, she doesn’t believe that, not anymore. 

Before she can beat herself up about it any more, however, the Doctor leans in – just a fraction – and brushes her with a soft kiss. It’s enough to set her hearts racing, every cell in her body screaming their need to stay alive. The Doctor reaches up and cups Missy’s cheek gently, and – Missy is relieved to see – she is tearing up as well. Sentimental idiot. Her cheeks are flushed, and her blonde hair hangs about her face in ragged tufts, sticking out at odd angles in the heat, the energy surging. 

“Koschei, listen to me,” she says, her hands now clasped loosely behind Missy’s neck, “you are so very strong.” She emphasises every word, a whisper. To her dismay, the Doctor steps back, letting her fingers linger and brush her shoulder as she backs away, smiling sadly. Showtime. 

Missy gulps back tears and returns the Doctor’s smile as she finally allows that humming, all-consuming energy to course through her. She can feel it, the walls of the dam burst and crumbling to a flood of gold, of life. Looking the Doctor in the eyes, she whispers one final message. 

“I don’t want to go.”


End file.
